I occasionally get a phone call from a student that wants to avoid the MCAT and has heard that some medical schools don’t require it for admissions. Today I want to talk about the myth of no MCAT requirement for medical school admissions.
In all fairness, myth isn’t really quite the right word because there are medical schools that technically don’t require the MCAT for some students. There are some BS/MD programs where the MCAT is not required before attending the medical school. For example, the BS/MD programs at Brown, Case Western and University of Pittsburgh don’t require the MCAT. But BS/MD programs are for high school seniors only.
There are also a few early assurance programs that don’t require the MCAT. For example the FlexMed program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai doesn’t require the MCAT. Nor does the early assurance program at Tuft’s University.
There are also some Post Baccalaureate programs that have linkage agreements with certain medical schools that don’t require the MCAT. Columbia University’s Post Bacc pre-med program, for example, has multiple linkage agreements several of which don’t require the MCAT, including the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, the Warren Alpert Brown University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
But traditional medical colleges? Almost no one gets admitted without an MCAT score. In the past, some medical schools said that they didn’t require the MCAT. Dartmouth used to say this but that statement went away some years ago.
The bottom line is that it is almost impossible to avoid the MCAT unless you are applying to medical school by a special program like BS/MD or early assurance. Even then, most of the BS/MD programs and early assurance programs require the MCAT to move on to the medical school. If you are solely focused on avoiding the MCAT, you might want to reconsider whether medical school is the right route for you.
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